Consider a more complex situation. In the early part of this century, companies heavily polluted the New Jersey waterfront. They saved some money by dumping chemicals into landfills instead of disposing of them properly. Now, half a century later, the current generation is spending tremendous sums of money to clean up that land. Even after partial rehabilitation, the value of that land is depressed considering its proximity to highly-desirable Manhattan.
Entertaining the notion that "natural rights" exit,[1] did those companies, through their purchase of that waterfront land which was not very valuable at the time, acquire a natural right to not just use that land for their immediate purposes, but to extract the value of that land for themselves, arbitrarily far into the future? That's exactly what our system of private property allows people to do, and it's almost certainly not economically efficient in the intergenerational sense.
The other complex cases are things like land in the west. None of that land would be inhabited without the tremendous efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1800's to irrigate that land. Nobody who owns land in say Arizona can claim that they have a "natural right" to all of the proceeds of that land. Their activity on that land is a vast inter-generational joint-venture. A private company in the government's position at the time could have taken a huge equity stake in any activity in the west, one that would thanks to the law of property inure to this day. Though anybody who originally bought that land would be long-dead today, all his or her successors would have taken subject to that equity stake.
[1] Of course there is no such thing as "natural right" at least not to anyone who doesn't believe in a deity.
Entertaining the notion that "natural rights" exit,[1] did those companies, through their purchase of that waterfront land which was not very valuable at the time, acquire a natural right to not just use that land for their immediate purposes, but to extract the value of that land for themselves, arbitrarily far into the future? That's exactly what our system of private property allows people to do, and it's almost certainly not economically efficient in the intergenerational sense.
The other complex cases are things like land in the west. None of that land would be inhabited without the tremendous efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1800's to irrigate that land. Nobody who owns land in say Arizona can claim that they have a "natural right" to all of the proceeds of that land. Their activity on that land is a vast inter-generational joint-venture. A private company in the government's position at the time could have taken a huge equity stake in any activity in the west, one that would thanks to the law of property inure to this day. Though anybody who originally bought that land would be long-dead today, all his or her successors would have taken subject to that equity stake.
[1] Of course there is no such thing as "natural right" at least not to anyone who doesn't believe in a deity.